Sheahon Zenger is killing the Kansas Football Program

Kansas football is in shambles.

If it weren’t for the current facilities, it might even be worse than in the late-1980s when KU was one of the worst programs in college football.

For your consideration, here are the worst 3-season stretches in KU football history:

1940-42: 7-21 (25.0%)

1924-26: 6-16-2 (25.0%)

1977-79: 7-25-1 (21.2%)

1953-55: 5-24-1 (17.2%)

2010-12: 6-30 (16.7%)

1986-88: 5-26-1 (15.6%)

* 2015-17: 3-31 (8.8% with two games left to play)

Oh for the days when Kansas football could win one-third of its games!

Zenger’s football hires are a combined 9-53, and I’m being super nice because I’m not counting Clint Bowen’s 8 games when he was interim coach.

Zenger’s only other major hire, women’s basketball coach Brandon Schneider, went 14-47, 2-44 Big 12 in his first two seasons at KU.

While the coaches are part of the problem, Sheahon Zenger CANNOT be allowed to hire another football coach. Let me put it to you this way:

• The current athletic director at the University of Kansas was born in Salina, has his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Kansas State, before getting his PhD from KU.
• Seven years ago at his introductory press conference, he pledged to fix football. He’s hired (and fired) two football coaches, his football hires have combined for a 10-61 record (including Bowen this time).
• The football program has lost an FBS-record 45-straight road games.
• Home game attendance barely cracks 20,000, and that’s tickets sold, not butts in seats. Fan apathy is at an all-time high.
• He signed an extension/raise offered to him by an outgoing chancellor, then extended the current football coach’s contract while doubling that coach’s salary, a coach who is now 3-31 in almost three full years and has one (fluke) win over an FBS program.
• There’s no doubt about it: Sheahon Zenger is an enemy spy bent on the humiliation and destruction of the Kansas football program.

Ok, so maybe hopefully that last bullet point is a bit of hyperbole, but yikes. But don’t worry, it’s OK, because Dr. Zenger loves the University of Kansas. Well guess what, I love the University as well and I would also make a terrible athletic director.

And yes, Kansas probably needs a new head football coach as well. There are repeated questionable fourth-down playcalls, bad clock management, and players are constantly out of position, unprepared, and not developing in their time in Lawrence. The coaching staff can’t even figure out who the best quarterback is on the roster. There are blown assignments on defense, missed blocks on offense, and recruiting Texas is supposed to be this staff’s strong suit. There are currently zero recruits from the state of Texas verbally committed to next year’s class.

And speaking of recruiting, has this staff not learned from Charlie Weis’ mistakes? Apparently not, as 29 of Beaty’s 74 recruits (39%) have been transfers.

David Beaty himself said before the season that he expected to see “dividends” in 2017, clearly referring to wins. He has since backed off those remarks.

Kansas has clearly regressed from 2016 to 2017. If the offense is a disaster (and it is), the defense is somehow even worse despite having at least four players that would play for almost every other Big 12 team (Armstrong, Wise, Dineen, Lee).

Kansas struggled in its opening game of the season, got embarrassed in back-to-back weeks by teams from the MAC, nearly set a record for offensive futility in a three-game streak, and lost to previously winless Baylor by four touchdowns in what advanced stats indicated was a pick ‘em game.

The good news is, and this will come as a shock to some people - it does NOT take five years to turn around a program! For a current example, look three hours north on I-35 to Ames, Iowa! But if that’s not convincing enough, feel free to take a look at Purdue, Virginia, SMU, Syracuse, NC State, Eastern Michigan, Army, or Washington State. Past examples include our very own Kansas (Mark Mangino) and K-State (Bill Snyder). Feel free to persuse this list of turnaround coaches and programs (that took me less than 10 minutes to come up with).

But this isn’t about David Beaty. A new athletic director should get the opportunity to evaluate Beaty and the Kansas football program. Zenger should have been fired the day after he himself canned Charlie Weis. After all, this is the man who stood up in a press conference and announced, “I set out to find the best, and I found Charlie Weis.” Captain Hindsight tells us that was a fireable offense on its own.

Now, Dr. Zenger is tasked with raising $300 million dollars for a football program that has won three games in three years. I think maybe he’s been binge-watching Field of Dreams. As of October 18, $20 million has reportedly been raised.

It’s time to Raise the Chant, so long as that chant goes like this: Fire Zenger!